"
There were many embracings among the excited Frenchmen,--many
sympathetic tears from those who were to stay behind,--many messages
left with them for wives, children, friends, and mistresses; and then
this valiant band pushed their boats from shore. It was a hare-brained
venture, for, as young Debre had assured them, the Spaniards on the
River of May were four hundred in number, secure behind their ramparts.
Hour after hour the sailors pulled at the oar. They glided slowly by the
sombre shores in the shimmering moonlight, to the sound of the surf and
the moaning pine-trees. In the gray of the morning, they came to the
mouth of a river, probably the Nassau; and here a northeast wind set in
with a violence that almost wrecked their boats. Their Indian allies
were waiting on the bank, but for a while the gale delayed their
crossing. The bolder French would lose no time, rowed through the
tossing waves, and, landing safely, left their boats, and pushed into
the forest. Gourgues took the lead, in breastplate and back-piece. At
his side marched the young chief Olotoraca, with a French pike in his
hand; and the files of arquebuse-men and armed sailors followed close
behind. They plunged through swamps, hewed their way through brambly
thickets and the matted intricacies of the forests, and, at five in the
afternoon, almost spent with fatigue and hunger, came to a river or
inlet of the sea, not far from the first Spanish fort.
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